[ganeshkrishnan]

The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published officially. Most people died at homes due to them being rural and all hospitals working at capacity.

At government hospitals, you have to be tested and be covid positive to be listed as covid death.

Private hospitals in rural areas simply don't send the stats back.

I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.

They said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and this is probably the price to pay for letting Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies. The strain has escaped India and we don't know how it will affect the rest of the world.

All his political life, him and his supporters cried for statues and temples and now they stand on the ashes of million dead people and all they can hear is a deafening silence of their gods.

[apoorvagk]

> I don't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives.

I am sorry for the losses you and your friends have experienced. I came here to provide a contrarian view just so that the readers here do not get a skewed view of what is going on.

I agree with you that the actual deaths are at least 10X and possibly 100X more than the official numbers. But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years. I know many friends and colleagues too whose entire families have been safe in this pandemic. There are a few who have lost a family member to COVID-19. Some of them got infected and recovered. But most of the people in my circle and their families are safe.

[ganeshkrishnan]

>But nobody in my family has been tested positive with COVID-19 or died of COVID-19 or any other illness in the last 2 years.

My immediate family could quarantine because we are relatively well off. We can order online and most of our jobs are tech as well.

Other friends and families including doctors can't afford to stay locked down. The first wave was withering down, life was returning back to normal. All modi had to do was to sit down and shut up. But he thought his getting elected was more important so he organized election rallies and let the kumbh mela happen with 12 million people gathering.

[Clewza313]

It's even worse than that: the Kumbh Mela was organized one year earlier than it would normally be, and Modi/BJP are partly responsible for that.

[blackoil]

OP said relatives, which adds extended family.

Even by worst estimates ~50% of population has been infected, so not surprising to find families which are not infected.

[ridiculous_lol]

My distant family members have been tested positive but no one has died. The parent is definitely stretching it.

[nandhinianand]

There's a big difference in prevalence/spread of covid across economic classes. Without knowing which one you belong to, this is not a great data point.

[tasuki]

It is a good data point.

Ganeshkrishnan said he didn't know any family in India that didn't have a death among their relatives. He didn't say such families didn't exist, just that he didn't know any. It is valuable to provide information that such families do exist.

[hiyer]

> Modi run his private circus of his kumbh mela and election rallies.

In terms of number of cases the worst affected are Karnataka and Maharashtra[0] which had neither Kumbh Mela nor election rallies. Neither did other badly affected states like Delhi. Kumbh Mela in fact started when the "second wave" was already well entrenched.

Also, long after Kumbh Mela was truncated and the election rallies got over - and even at the height of the second wave - people were still blowing social distancing norms to smithereens at farmers rallies [1] and Ramzan/Eid celebrations[2].

0. https://www.covid19india.org/

1. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/covid-norms-go-for-...

2. https://theprint.in/health/covid-protocols-up-in-the-air-in-...

[approxim8ion]

In terms of "declared" number of cases.

[fellellor]

This thread is insane.

[bongoman37]

Things are pretty bad. I was talking to a colleague of mine who lost his Dad to COVID in Delhi and he said the wait time at the crematorium was super long. He found one guy was who in queue with bodies of both his parents for almost 18 hours. Given the situation, relatives are reluctant or unable to help so this guy just sat with the bodies all alone.

[actuator]

The situation is quite sad, and I am happy you and your family are fine as you mentioned in your other comment. I am quite sure you can do without spreading FUD here though.

If you have data to back up the 10-100x claim, please share it.

There has been undercounting in most countries and India having largely poor infra you would expect it to be higher there. The data has been analysed by a lot of experts and most are putting the real count between 2-3x. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1390536686635978752?s=...

[avemuri]

Here's one state's 10x. https://thewire.in/health/not-covid-stunned-by-data-gujarat-...

>> I am quite sure you can do without spreading FUD here though.

With due respect, our entire country is experiencing fear, uncertainty and certainly despair. Giving voice to it is not unreasonable.

[ganeshkrishnan]

The 10x count is comparing death certificates with official counts; you are right.

And a significant portion of the families especially low income families don't even get death certificates. There were people that died and their fatality will never be recorded anywhere anytime.

[actuator]

> With due respect, our entire country is experiencing fear, uncertainty and certainly despair. Giving voice to it is not unreasonable.

I totally respect and understand that. It is just that hyperbolic figures just lead to flame wars and I would rather not have it here. That's why I asked them to back it up with statistical analysis they are relying on.

Do you have any other source other than the blog you linked? I remember from Wikipedia source discussions, that the site is not a good source for news reporting, so I am going to skip opening their article.

[avemuri]

The source quoted in the article is a local language newspaper, the wire is not the original source. Others have carried it as well. eg. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/61k-covid-deaths-n...

Other reports from cremations in multiple cities have been approximately similar. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1384782984138694658?...

You're right that it isn't 10x everywhere. India as a whole is probably 3-5x, but the point that it is 10-100x in the very worst areas is also true. Some places in UP and Bihar are reporting no COVID deaths at all. People are dying of 'cough and fever'

Finally, at a pan India level, while the government refuses to count deaths accurately, it has done sero-surveys. Those have consistently shown antibodies in 25-60% of the population (before this new wave) with the higher figures reported from poorer denser areas.

As of now, even after the new wave, official figures say about 2% of our population has been infected.

[statguy]

Did you even read the article? The article reports work done by an unrelated journalist who compared the death certificates issued during the same periods in 2020 and 2021 to estimate the number of excess deaths, which was 15x the number of covid-19 deaths reported by the government during the period.

[statguy]

There is a lot of evidence that the death toll in India is an order of magnitude higher:

From this very article: "He said officially 196 people had died from the virus in Kanpur between 16 April and 5 May, but the data from seven crematoriums showed nearly 8,000 cremations."

Here is another analysis from Gujarat: https://mobile.twitter.com/deepakpatel_91/status/13930705967...

The study that you have linked to above has primarily focused on western countries, where the process of reporting and recording of deaths is much better than in India.

[actuator]

I think their analysis is also using the total pronounced deaths to Covid deaths and studying the delta from previous years, the same as the tweet you linked.

The figures seem higher in the tweet, I am guessing we will have more clarity on this once the situation settles down a bit and more data can be aggregated.

[ganeshkrishnan]

>If you have data to back up the 10-100x claim, please share it.

15x more death certificates issued.

10x lower death per million wrt comparable countries

Much more rural deaths in second wave which were totally not counted.

The "daily bhaskar" did an investigative report in couple of districts and said it was 20-40x.

I am not trying to fear monger. Just obey the lockdown, use the mask and get the vaccines. And when things return to normal focus on development instead of egoistical statues and temples.

[ganeshkrishnan]

The global death toll is 2-3x than listed not for India.

[actuator]

Can you please read that graph again and tell me where you didn't have clarity?

~600k/~200k is ~ 3x.

Those are the numbers mentioned for the country in discussion here.

[amriksohata]

Sorry not true, there were multiple events that led to this including a lack of social distancing at the Farmers Protest. The EC requested digital rallies but it was the opposition parties that blocked that happening, not Modis party. The Kumbh happened after the variant of the Chinese virus was discovered. In between many festivities continued like Ramadan etc.

[cipher_system]

I'm sorry to hear that. The number of cases has been difficult to compare between countries since everyone measures differently but the number of deaths are in many countries extremely accurate and even though it differs a bit each year it still gives a good measure of how bad it is.

Do you know if this is reported and compiled accurate in India?

[cscurmudgeon]

Also, India had the world's largest protests by farmers protesting against removal of subsidies.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/india-farmer-protest...

> The number of fatalities is 10x-100x more than what is published

Source?

[robbiep]

I'm just trying to understand how insensitive it is to comment on a thread where OP is clearly someone who has either suffered loss or has an entire network suffering loss, and then go full strong systemiser and ask for a reference.

The absurdity of asking is even stronger when almost any understanding of the situation on the ground in India would mean an understanding that there is widespread and systemic problems with data collection in India, essentially as there has been throughout the pandemic globally, reflecting the difficulty of determining infection rates, CFR vs IFR and deaths in a testing scarcity environment. I don't know for sure but I would anticipate that there is a good chance that many indian deaths are never registered which would make other post pandemic methods of determining true 'excess mortality' very difficult.

The particular irony in this whole post extending from your question being that the BBC itself, in the linked article, in the second paragraph, states that 'experts say the real death toll is several times higher'.

Now that isn't your 1-2 magnitudes but you don't have to travel far from there to get those types of sources, but depending on how strong-systemiser you go on requiring hard numbers, the fact is no-one will ever know because no one is counting

[thatguy0900]

So we should accept any numbers thrown out as long as the person is sufficiently bereaved? I don't even think their numbers are wrong but that's a silly concept. I am sorry for their, and everyone's, losses, but that doesn't give a liscense to claim anything unchallenged.

[robbiep]

Of course not. But what does it add to the conversation in what is manifestly an out of control situation with terrible data all round. How do you respond to that when there are no good authorative sources, except Doctors reports, oxygen stockpiling, and lack of cremation space to the point that trees in parks are being cut down to burn bodies?

[hzay]

A lot of comments that appear neutral here are actually political btw. Saying that deaths are undercounted or citing foreign media is seen as "anti national" now within India.

[robbiep]

Everything regarding COVID is political which is absurd. I'm not indian or have any indian family but I am a Doctor and most of my lines of data come from the medical community reporting back

[aww_dang]

Most things can be interpreted politically.

That doesn't mean "here's why I blame COVID on my political opponents, AKA the evil-doers", is an interesting or useful start to a discussion. If it is, the counterpoint about protests is equally valid.

[robbiep]

Did I or have I done that? I have no political skin in the game here

[dukeofdoom]

What do feeling have to do with facts. COVID has at most 1% mortality rate. It hasn't been shown to significantly increase yearly mortality rate. About the same number of people are dying as every year. The Ganges is a large river. The claim is a hyperbolic exaggeration.

[robbiep]

Feeling doesn't have anything to do with facts, as I pointed out to the other poster.

However in a situation with very little in the way of actual verifiable facts, what is someone actually asking for in terms of something that will support the evidence? What is a source in this environment? And at various thresholds of that, I will give you many sources (mostly medical) that will support 1-2 orders of magnitude increase. The article itself says only 196 people died in Kanpur during a 3 week period, but there were 8,000 cremations (obviously not all covid related, and without a baseline I can't tell you where this sits, but there is an implied increase given the other statements about lack of cremation space)

I would also challenge your definition of 'significant'. In the US last year, there was a 20% increase in excess deaths (0). Having an extra 20% of humans die in your country counts, I think, as significant.

Now granted it really depends on whether you are talking about India, the US, or the rest of the world but your statement is demonstrably false - in a country with good data, there were an extra 20% of humans dying last year; in a country with terrible data with an out of control epidemic and no way for people to isolate safely, the facts are we will probably never know what the true deaths are but if you're saying (and here a couple of things don't compute) about the same number of people are dying every year (?in India? how do you know that in the absence of data? and generally death statistics take several months to become solid) and the Ganges is a large river, are these two statements logically linked? And how?

(0) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361

[Exmoor]

> What do feeling have to do with facts. COVID has at most 1% mortality rate.

The basis for this is data from places with at least some level of health care. From the reports I'm hearing, a lot of India's rural population is not making it medical care.

Also, worth mentioning that 1% of India's population is 13.8 million people.

[dukeofdoom]

1% of those that get the disease. Not everyone. I would expect the average Indian to fare better than the average American due to the population being younger. Some stats on age and comorbidities.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

[flukus]

> Source?

It's a poor country and tests aren't free, that alone will give you an under count. Throw in the current crises, the positivity rate and all the other challenges of a developing nation and 10x is not at all surprising.

Accurate numbers are a privilege of wealthy nations and even they struggled.

[cscurmudgeon]

> It's a poor country and tests aren't free, that alone will give you an under count.

So bigotry is the source. Got it.

Why not make it 1000x-100000x?